Well, one of the dominant themes throughout the history of this podcast, Ask Pastor John, is looking at the local church. How do I find a good local church? When should I leave my local church? Can I attend multiple churches? How do you respond to someone who says, I won't leave Jesus, but I'm done with the local church and it's failed leaders, etc.?

A lot of ground has been covered on these topics of the church and how it functions locally, as you can see in the APJ book beginning on page 417.

Yesterday we read Galatian 6 together in our Bible reading, which relates to the local church and how it functions into a specific situation that we want to ask you about today, Pastor John's an anonymous email from a listener.

Pastor John, hello.

My son-in-law committed adultery and lied to the church elders about it.

For it, they removed him from church membership.

Since his transgression, he ended the adulterous relationship and repented and has been working

hard to restore trust in his marriage. But the church has not reached out to him to restore

his membership. He has continued to attend church and hasn't taken the

Lord's Supper. The church does not allow him to attend the small group that they were a part of or go to

membership potluck dinners. How and when does a church wisely restore the repentant? As a pastor,

what fruit were you looking for? What were your steps forward?

How did those who are spiritual, quote, restore him in a spirit of gentleness, as Paul says,

in Galatians 6.1? Well, it's always dangerous, isn't it, to give local church advice from a distance.

Oh my, there's so much of this on the internet. And it's so often quite harmful when people pontificate from a distance about what's happening

in a local church thousands of miles away. From a distance, we seldom see all the factors that go into choices that elders

and members are making. And so without telling this church what to do in any specific case,

let me give maybe, I don't know, five or six, several biblical guidelines or principles that I think will

provide some guidance in this situation. I have an opinion, but I'm so hesitant to put it forward

as anything like absolute. So here's principle number one. Church discipline is a good thing. The guidelines

for practicing it are given Matthew 18, 15 to 17. Examples of it are given in 1st Corinthians 5 and

2nd Thessalonians 3. The principle behind it is that the church is made up of baptized believers in Jesus, born again, spirit

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